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enHow to Build Community Trust to Fight Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congohttp://l.blogs.oxfam/en/blogs/19-05-02-how-build-community-trust-fight-ebola-democratic-republic-congo
<div class="field field-name-body"><p><em><strong>The world’s second-biggest Ebola outbreak is still raging in DRC, with more than 1,200 cases and 800 deaths. Research has shown that distrust is one of the biggest obstacles in this Ebola fight. Oxfam's Andrea Vera outlines three ways to work with local communities to build their trust and increase the success of an Ebola response in a conflict context.</strong></em></p><p>On April 19, 2019, an epidemiologist deployed by the World Health Organization in the Ebola outbreak response was <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/04/23/716121928/the-doctor-killed-in-fridays-ebola-attack-was-dedicated-but-also-afraid?t=1556284340775" rel="nofollow">killed in an armed attack</a> and his colleagues injured. Just a few days earlier, other attacks had taken place in Beni territory on an <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/03/drc-ebola-treatment-centre-attacked-killed-190309135835087.html" rel="nofollow">Ebola treatment center in Butembo</a> where armed men were engaged in a gunfight with security forces for about half an hour before the situation was contained.</p><p>Terrified patients fled the hospital, despite suffering the painful symptoms of Ebola. It took weeks for response teams to find them. The message of those who fled was clear: their fear of dying from an attack was greater than their hope of being cured in the Ebola treatment center.</p><p>In a country where communities build their own health clinics, it is a rare thing to see these precious resources destroyed. However, this is now happening all too often in Butembo city; leaving people afraid to go to Ebola treatment centers and their local health clinics.</p><p><strong>The consequences are severe</strong></p><p>Most patients now only arrive at treatment centers once they are already very weak and showing several symptoms of Ebola. At this phase of the disease, treatment is far less effective, and chances of survival are <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/04/worlds-second-biggest-ebola-outbreak-still-raging-heres-why-hot-zone/" rel="nofollow">drastically reduced</a>.</p><p>Some doctors and nurses have now closed their private clinics because the work has become too dangerous. They do not want to run the risk of being associated with Ebola teams because it could damage their reputation, as many people think the response is a money-making business and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/congo-s-ebola-response-threatened-conspiracy-theories-rumors-n994156" rel="nofollow">do not trust</a> that those who work with the response really want to help.</p><p>Likewise, people are increasingly reluctant to get vaccinated or receive other help to protect them from Ebola, such as decontaminating houses, safe burials and <a href="http://news.trust.org/item/20190424203556-g95c7" rel="nofollow">food distribution</a>.</p><p><img alt="Bora, who works as a public heath promotor assistant for Oxfam, installs a chlorinated hand washing point outside a church in Mangina, DRC. Photo: John Wessels/Oxfam" title="Bora, who works as a public heath promotor assistant for Oxfam, installs a chlorinated hand washing point outside a church in Mangina, DRC. Photo: John Wessels/Oxfam" height="826" width="1240" class="media-element file-default" data-delta="3" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://l.blogs.oxfam/sites/default/files/113738lpr-oxfam-washstand-1240.jpg" /></p><p><em>Bora, who works as a public heath promotor assistant for Oxfam, installs a chlorinated hand washing point outside a church in Mangina, DRC. Photo: John Wessels/Oxfam</em></p><p><strong>Oxfam’s work on Ebola in DRC</strong></p><p>Oxfam has worked on this latest Ebola epidemic, the tenth in DRC, since August 2018. We have focused on public health promotion and supporting communities to design and carry-out their own action plans to break the chain of transmission.</p><p>We are also providing safe, clean water in affected communities, constructing latrines and waste disposal incinerators at health centers. In addition, Oxfam is leading on advocacy and communication efforts to make the response more inclusive and community-focused.</p><p>From our DRC experience, and from working in Ebola outbreaks in West Africa, we have learned some valuable lessons on how to fight the disease more effectively:</p><p><strong>1. Draw on local health capacity</strong></p><p>“In Butembo we have doctors… we want them to be the ones who treat us.”</p><p>Since the beginning of the outbreak, people have constantly asked health and aid workers to respect their culture and tradition, provide consistent information, deliver services on time, follow and respect vaccination lists, and to be treated by their own local doctors.</p><p>But, these requests have been often ignored, which has broken essential trust. Rather than support local health clinics and work with local health workers in a response, agencies have often created a parallel system to treat Ebola. This has only further frustrated people, and increased their reluctance to accept services that could treat many patients in their own communities.</p><p><strong>2. The response must be adapted to the local context</strong></p><p>The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is different, because it is happening in a conflict zone with a long history of violence where state security forces do not have full control. Many people in Beni, Mangina and Butembo blame the state for the lack of security.</p><p>This context of conflict has not been effectively included in designing the response, and feedback from the community has been ignored. The result has been to repeat previous mistakes.</p><p>Recently the Ministry of Health and international organizations, like Oxfam, have set up a response-wide mechanism to track and deal with people’s concerns. If the system is fully implemented it has the potential to correct the ways of working according to people’s recommendations.</p><p><strong>3. Ownership by the community is essential</strong></p><p><em>“Why are you talking about community engagement, and bringing people from other countries who do not speak our language?” </em></p><p>The vaccination and decontamination teams that go out into villages cannot effectively engage with the local communities because they often do not speak the local language. They don’t have the same capacities as local people to explain the risks of not getting vaccinated or not decontaminating their homes, or the need to get treatment early.</p><p>Community engagement means treating communities as equal partners, and recognising their capacity and experience to stop Ebola. It means respecting and involving local leaders and training local people to decontaminate, carry out safe burials and manage effective community-based surveillance to isolate cases, and refer people to clinics as early as possible.</p><p><img alt="A medical practitioner administers the Ebola vaccine to an Oxfam worker in Mangina, DRC. Photo: John Wessels/Oxfam" title="A medical practitioner administers the Ebola vaccine to an Oxfam worker in Mangina, DRC. Photo: John Wessels/Oxfam" height="826" width="1240" class="media-element file-default" data-delta="2" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://l.blogs.oxfam/sites/default/files/113723lpr-oxfam-staff-vaccination-1240.jpg" /></p><p><em>A medical practitioner administers the Ebola vaccine to an Oxfam worker in Mangina, DRC. Photo: John Wessels/Oxfam</em></p><p><strong>Moving forward</strong></p><p>In recent weeks, we have observed positive movements with decontamination activities organized in collaboration with community groups, an initiative that we find very encouraging. Involving communities in developing action plans to solve challenges is as critical as medical expertise when it comes to effective prevention of Ebola.</p><p>Oxfam is working side-by-side with highly qualified health workers and technical experts from different organizations and the Ministry of Health who are working in harsh conditions and unsafe environments. Their daily efforts and invaluable support needs to be complemented with more community owned actions to end the current outbreak.</p><p><em>This entry posted on 2 May 2019, by Andrea Vera Nava, Oxfam Humanitarian Campaigns and Advocacy Manager. Andrea has worked in several countries in Latin America, Middle East and Africa. She has been working on the Ebola crisis in North Kivu and Ituri since October 2018, moving between the main epidemic hotspots.</em></p><p><em>Top photo: Medical workers administer the Ebola vaccine in Mangina, DRC. Oxfam was one of the first organizations to respond to the Ebola outbreak in North-Kivu and Ituri provinces. Photo: John Wessels/Oxfam</em></p><p><strong>Read more:</strong></p><ul><li><a href="https://blogs.oxfam.org/en/blogs/18-06-11-oxfam-10-lessons-working-communities-fight-ebola"><strong>Oxfam's 10 lessons for working with communities to fight Ebola</strong></a></li><li><strong>Download <a href="https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/620139/gd-community-engagement-wash-031116-en.pdf" rel="nofollow">Oxfam’s Guide to Community Engagement in WASH, based on lessons from Ebola</a></strong></li></ul><p></p></div><div class="field field-name-title"><h2>How to Build Community Trust to Fight Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo</h2></div>Thu, 02 May 2019 14:23:33 +0000Guest Blogger81952 at http://l.blogs.oxfamhttp://l.blogs.oxfam/en/blogs/19-05-02-how-build-community-trust-fight-ebola-democratic-republic-congo#comments